An Interesting Conversation Between A Student And Teacher

Originally posted by ModernAcademia
Student: Professor, is there such a thing as heat?
Prof: Yes.

Student: And is there such a thing as cold?
Prof: Yes.

Student: No sir. There isn't.

(The lecture theatre becomes very quiet with this turn of events.)

Student: Sir, you can have lots of heat, even more heat, superheat,
mega heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat. But we don't have anything called cold. We can hit 458 degrees below zero which is no heat, but we
can't go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold. Cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold.

"Hot" and "cold" are qualitative assessments of the amount of energy being released by an object. Thus, we CAN measure coldness, it is simply
given as an amount of energy, usually Joules, Calories, or even Celsius/Kelvin. The student is confusing the quantitaive "heat" with the qualitative
"hot", meaning he has never taken a basic, middle school science course.

This argument is bunk.

Student: What about darkness, Professor? Is there such a thing as
darkness?

Prof: Yes. What is night if there isn't darkness?

Student: You're wrong again, sir. Darkness is the absence of
something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light,
flashing light....But if you have no light constantly, you have
nothing and it's called darkness, isn't it? In reality, darkness
isn't. If it were you would be able to make darkness darker,
wouldn't you?

Again, "dark" is a qualitiative assessment of the amount of light present. The amount of light, given in candelas, can be measured at any point and
given a value. A person might look at an environment with very few candelas of light present and say, "Wow, it's dark", meaning he is assigning a
qualitative value to a quantitative one. The student has, once again, confused quantitative and qualitative data.

This argument is bunk as well.

Now tell me, Professor. Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?

Prof: If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, yes, of course, I do.

Student: Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?

(The Professor shakes his head with a smile, beginning to realize
where the argument is going.)

Student: Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor, are you not
teaching your opinion, sir? Are you not a scientist but a preacher?

We observe evolution everyday and can stimulate its occurrence in the laboratory in bacteria. As for macroeveolution, we have countless fossils and
even living examples. One would be the salamanders living around the grand canyon. There are several zones of a given width around the canyon. Only
adjacent zones can interbreed. while those zones with one intervening zone cannot. This is due to a geographic separation becoming large enough that
the species evolved differently and no longer have genes similar enough to produce viable offspring.

Student: Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the
Professor's brain?

(The class breaks out into laughter.)

Student: Is there anyone here who has ever heard the Professor's
brain, felt it, touched or smelt it? No one appears to have done so.
So, according to the established rules of empirical, stable,
demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, sir.

Perform a simple MRI, CT or ultrasound and you can see the professor's brain all you'd like.

My point in all the analysis is this: if your only refuge is mischaracterizing the other side (that is, religion mischaracterizing science), then what
does that really say for your argument? If you need to twist and pervert the very BASIC tenets of science in order to make it seem like your stance is
just as plausible, you've already lost.

It's good to keep in mind the likelihood that there are aspects of reality that we are inherently incapable of perceiving or understanding, but which
are no less real than the physical universe we acknowledge. We have our limitations.

Imagine a complex, detailed mural painted on a wall. Now cover the mural with canvas. Now cut a one-inch-by-one-inch hole somewhere in the canvas. Now
look through the hole and describe the mural.

Mankind based reality upon our five senses at the basic level. See, hear, touch, smell, taste. Such senses are used to confirm the reality of a sight
or a situation. More so if such sights or situation are repeatable, a further confirmation of reality.

However, anything else that does not conform to our 5 senses, it becomes theories, and would need beliefs to support instead. The sun was claimed to
burn out within a few billion years, but is that a reality? It can be calculated, but nevertheless, had our 5 senses confirmed it? Nope, thus it is
not a reality, but an intelligent theory, a theory only nevertheless.

We can feel less heat when the temp drops below 15 degrees. Do we go around saying we feel less heat, or a better term be used? Cold was used to
define when less heat occurs. Semantics got in the way by the student, i guess.

While we can see or cannnot see the brain, what is the brain for actually? It is nothing more than a mental receptacle where intelligence is
processed. If i can write on the board the answer for 1+1=2, I would have proved my intelligence. Conversely, if i fail, i would be deemed a fool. It
is intelligence, and NOT the receptacle, that needs to be seen.

Utimately, beliefs and reality works hand in hand, and must continue to do so. One cannot live without the other, for without a belief of moral
values,having only science, we will go and do what no man had ever done before. Killing others would be the least of one's capability.

Without science, just having beliefs would only lead us to live in delusions and be easily succeptable to manipulation by others. Point is, we humans
must never be satisfied with the status quo. Our curiosity must never stop or evolution will end at the current stage.

Interesting, but the professor is correct about faith in god. It's illogical to have absolute faith in something without proof.

Heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the
absence of it.

True, but the original question was:

Student: And is there such a thing as cold?
Prof: Yes.

Yes cold is the absence of heat, so in a sense it's like asking the question "is there such a thing as absence of heat?" Just pure semantics
trickery.

Although the professor should have realised the trap, and explained the differences between quantitatively and qualitatively definitions.

Student: Sir, you are working on the premise of duality. You argue there is life and then there is death, a good God and a bad God.

To be honest this is irrelevant because there is no proof of any god, and it doesn't matter if anyone pretends or fantasises what may exist on
another level that we cannot observe because if you only have faith, then you could be wrong. After all, most christian beliefs have been proven
wrong before.

You are viewing the concept of God as something finite

Doesn't matter if we assume god is infinite. We have infinity in Maths for x/0 terms.

science can't even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism, but has never seen, much less fully understood either one.

Student: Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the
Professor's brain?

We can measure the effects of thoughts, love etc - rebuttal of the usual strawman arguments.

I suppose he has never heard of an MRI scanner! has christianity built a god scanner yet, and are they actually trying to build one!

Student: Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?

I'm sorry, but DNA confirms evolution, and Geosciences and Astrophysics both confirm the ages of the Earth and solar system to be magnitudes or order
greater than any christian beliefs.

The link between man & god is FAITH . That is all that keeps things moving & alive.

I keep moving when I don't have faith, and some who have faith have stopped moving quite suddenly.

The student is correct about duality, darkness is just absence of light, however that has nothing to do with proving God's existence it just proves
the duality wrong.

Evolution has been observed both in the fossil record and with Darwin's Finches (which was his prime example of evolution). Also Evolution is
blatantly obvious, look at how similar all life on Earth is and how genetically similar we are to other primates, this alone proves relation. Was God
just feel uncreative and uninspired when he made life so he created it to be really similar? There's a reason other primates have thumbs and we do
too. Saying "God did it" is just a cop-out.

So I agree with many of the statements on duality but I have to say it does nothing to make the case for Creationism or God any stronger.

Student: Sir, you are working on the premise of duality. You argue there is life and then there is death, a good God and a bad God.

To be honest this is irrelevant because there is no proof of any god, and it doesn't matter if anyone pretends or fantasises what may exist on
another level that we cannot observe because if you only have faith, then you could be wrong. After all, most christian beliefs have been proven
wrong before.

[edit on 2-2-2010 by john124]

Proof of God does exist. Look around you. The universe declares His glory. Man has never been able to duplicate or replicate anything as amazing
and complex as God's creation. To believe that this is all here as an accident takes more faith than acknowledging an omnipotent God as Creator.

Sure beats believing that I'm just the result of some slime evolving into a monkey or fungus or whatever it is science has "proven" that we came
from recently.

I am also curious which Christian beliefs have been proven wrong... ever.

I’ve never seen a reaction that resulted in life! I suggest that their exists irrefutable evidence of intelligent design. This is the type of thing
that professors lose their tenure over and not a bible lesson.

You have a greater chance to walk through 100 feet of concrete than you do to replicate the perfect confederation that was needed for us to exist.
Throw in the facts about our place in the cosmos (Many detailed in the documentary below) and there is little doubt.

Don’t knock me until you have educated yourself a little. Please see the documentary -The Privileged Planet-
veehd.com... It is the only viewable information I’m aware of. It touches on
some of the points that I speak of. One can sit and contemplate endless reasons as to why only intelligent design makes sense.

This professor is just as closed minded as those he seeks to discredit. Just because you know or think someone is wrong does not make you right. How
would any man really know? The absolute best all we can do is evaluate the evidence we find in the world around us and form our own opinions. Don’t
discount intelligent design any more than you would discount evolution. GOD IS IN THE DESIGN!!!!

Just a side note to all your debating, - I don't know if anyone has mentioned it yet but it wasn't said by Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, in fact it is a made
up story, the way I originally heard it the student was Albert Einstein. Snoopes debunked it and talk about the origins of it.
www.yournotidiotsfinditbyyourself.org

I think a majority of us don't want to just sit on the couch playing playstation or hang out in mommy and daddy's basement mocking beliefs we
don't understand

Why not? playing playstation hanging out with mommy and daddy is just as valid as anything else you do in life. Even Solomon recognized this when he
said in Ecclesiastes that all in life is vanity.

It's quite an error to quote Solomon when you are only going to quote a small part of what he concluded from his Ecclesiastes experience. At the end
of his experiment, he concluded:

Ecc. 12:13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

It is clear from all that you wrote that you have a surface and cursory "understanding" of the Bible, which is really no understanding at all. You
think you can just read the Bible a little bit and then have an accurate understanding of it? Well, nothing could be further from the truth. I can
tell you that every person I have ever met who made the types of Biblical claims that you make has always made critical fallacies and errors. A
partial "truth" is a whole lie, and when you make claims that are only partial, you don't do anyone a service... quite the opposite really.

Moreover, "fact" doesn't mean "absolute certainty"; there ain't no such animal in an exciting and complex world. The final proofs of
logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists
make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us falsely for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In
science "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." I suppose that apples might
start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Man has never been able to duplicate or replicate anything as amazing and complex as God's creation.

We've cloned animals, will soon clone humans.

To believe that this is all here as an accident takes more faith than acknowledging an omnipotent God as Creator.

I don't believe it's an accident, and I don't believe anything as an absolute truth. I may believe some things more likely than other things as an
opinion and I accept we only know as much as we've discovered and learnt so far.

Sure beats believing that I'm just the result of some slime evolving into a monkey or fungus or whatever it is science has "proven" that we
came from recently.

What you prefer or like the most is irrelevant. I would love it to be proven that we're special and a chosen species that requires extra attention,
but where's the evidence for that.

I am also curious which Christian beliefs have been proven wrong... ever.

The Earth isn't 6000 years old for a start.

Believers are an "athiest" of all religions apart from their own, and an athiest is an "athiest" of one more religion than the believers.

The Above Top Secret Web site is a wholly owned social content community of The Above Network, LLC.

This content community relies on user-generated content from our member contributors. The opinions of our members are not those of site ownership who maintains strict editorial agnosticism and simply provides a collaborative venue for free expression.